Opinion The University Daily Kansan
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FREE FOR ALL
--with his current tax position.
To contribute to Free For All, visit Kansan.com or call (785) 864-0500.
Dear mom, I would thank you for sending the leftover pumpkin pie you made for me to eat, but the new recipe you're using is the reason there was leftovers. Don't use it Thursday.
--with his current tax position.
I have 90 pokes on Facebook and am still waiting on the other 1,239 to reply.
--with his current tax position.
I feel like Backstreet Boys at the AMAs made me want my childhood back.
--with his current tax position.
I'm pretty sure I stood behind the person that picks the FFAs at the football game. I wanted to ask why nothing I post gets picked, but I held back.
--with his current tax position.
How the hell did Justin Bieber win the Artist of the Year at the AMAs...
Rule #1: Love your beard,
because if you don't no one
will.
--with his current tax position.
If Burger King and Dairy Queen got married, you'd have the whole cow covered.
Yes, I am fanning myself like I'm going through menopause.
--with his current tax position.
Do you understand 'steam heating'? It's an awful creation
--with his current tax position.
--with his current tax position.
Why are there 39 beans in an Irish soup? Because if you add one more it would be too fat.
--with his current tax position.
Never get a butt and a foot confused. It only causes problems.
Ooooooo who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
--with his current tax position.
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the Chiefs from that horrible state called Missouri?
--with his current tax position.
Starting to get into Bon Iver right before winter will not put me in a good mood. But his music's so good!
--with his current tax position.
I met an engineer this weekend. For one thing I didn't know that they left the library and secondly I didn't know they could be so sexy. I learn something new everyday.
--with his current tax position.
No-Shave November, Day
23: Beard is becoming
untolerable, can't take much
longer.
--with his current tax position.
I only fight prison rules.
--with his current tax position.
EDITORIAL
Brownback's support of education not enough
When Sam Brownback was elected to replace Mark Parkinson as
When Sam Brownback was elected to replace Mark Parkinson as Kansas' next governor on Nov. 2, he made higher education a top priority. But his current tax position puts him at odds with providing public universities with state funding. More clarification is needed from Brownback on his position.
In his "Road Map for Kansas," Brownback said his goal for higher education was to "stabilize funding so our public universities remain strong to power a robust 21st century Kansas economy," and some of his more specific goals focus on the biosciences such as getting the National Cancer Institute designation at the University of Kansas Cancer Center and improving the rankings of the University of Kansas School of Medicine.
While these are good goals for the state, it is uncertain how Brownback will be able to provide public universities with the state funding needed to achieve them
Brownback is opposed to an increase in taxes and said he plans to stabilize state funding for high education by increasing the revenue of state taxes. By keeping taxes low and reducing regulation, he plans to create a business environment that will promote growth. But is this plan realistic? If his plan doesn't create enough revenue, Brownback will either be forced to make more cuts or go against his current position and raise taxes. Brownback needs to clarify what exactly his plan is to increase state revenue through taxes without raising them or creating new ones.
Another troubling action Brownback has made toward higher education is his lack of support for the "Kansas Commitment," a proposal to increase state funding by $50.4 million. According to a Nov. 2 article in The Kansan, Tom Holland, the democratic candidate who Brownback defeated by 27 percentage points (62 percent to 35 percent), endorsed the commitment after he received a letter from the student body presidents at the six regents universities urging him to do so. Brownback was sent the same letter and did not support the proposal. This lack of support questions Brownback's commitment to providing much-needed funding to higher education institutions.
Even in a time of economic turmoil, higher education needs to be a top priority for the state. With a budget that has been slashed, higher education institutions across the state are facing extreme cuts and they need more funding
In his "Road Map For Kansas," Brownback promised that within the "first month, we will have an encompassing, integrated plan to meet the needs of our time." That deadline is fast approaching and in that plan Brownback needs to clarify where he stands on providing more funding for higher education and his current tax position.
-Kate Larrabee for The Kansan Editorial Board
CARTOON
ENJOY GRANDMAS WARM COOKING!
MARIAM SAIFAN
GUEST COLUMN
Step 1 to stopping drunk texts - admit you have a problem
You'd be hard pressed to find a college student — or high school or middle school student, for that matter — who has not heard of (and downloaded the iPhone app for) Texts From Last Night, a website that posts funny drunk texts submitted by users, complete with ratings and comments. While hilarious, the website (and book that followed) glorifies the poor decision-making that goes hand-in-hand with alcohol.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far removed from our own, there were only drunken face-to-face conversations. Then came drunk phone calls, and then things escalated from there: Drunk texting, drunk Tweeting and drunk Facebook have all become common sources of shocked embarrassment the morning after
The fact that social networking has become a platform for expressing our inebriated voices is disturbing. What's more disturbing is that we've allowed it to become a cultural phenomenon.
The increasing prevalence of smartphones has only made it easier for us to humiliate ourselves. Constant Internet access means
drunk Facebook statuses, wall posts and chatting, drunk tweets and even drunk e-mails (likely the least common because e-mail is so, like, 2003). Ours is a culture that is obsessed with sharing our lives through social networking — and ours is a generation that is drunk on it.
This trend has reached epidemic proportions, as evidenced by the Social Media Sobriety Test, a free Firefox extension. The Test allows users to pick their social networking websites of choice and complete simple tasks (like dragging the cursor in a straight line) in order to gain access to their own accounts.
Upon visiting SocialMediaSobrietyTest.com, one is greeted with the warning "Nothing good happens online after 1 a.m." On the right-hand side of the page, there is a Twitter feed with the title "Avoidable Posts From Last Night," which displays a stream of blatantly drunken tweets (though when they were posted and whether they are real is unclear).
On the one hand, we are acknowledging our little alcohol/
Internet problem. On the other hand, we are trusting a computer's judgment over our own. Webroot, the company that makes the Social Network Sobriety Test, "believes in protecting you in every aspect of your life."
Remember the days when computer security systems protected us from hackers and viruses? Now, they're protecting us from ourselves. We've decided that social networking under the influence is a problem outside our control, so we're asking someone else to fix it for us. This won't eradicate drunk Facebook statuses — we're experts at circumventing the system. If we're drunk and have something we want to say, we will find a way to say it.
The first step is admitting it. "Hi, my name is ___, and I am a drunk social networker." Then, instead of relying on a computer application, take the steps to break the addiction on your own terms — for good.
— From UWIRE. Madeline Paumen for The Washington Square News at New York University.
LEFT SIDE
Democrats lose footing but still have to hold on
the election came and went and it didn't go too
I went and it didn't go too well for Team Blue, as you no doubt already know. The sweep wasn't completely shattering, however; the Democrats did keep the Senate and the vile Sharron Angle lost. These are no small things to be sure, and you can bet I was thank- ing my lucky stars in the early hours that Wednesday morning.
What to make of the election? Clearly, voters didn't know what they were getting into. It's been said that most brilliant thing the right has done is to trick average Americans into voting against their own interests. What is it going to take for people to understand that Republicans in power are, to put it delicately, not concerned about most of the population?
This is the party, remember that blocked the extension of unemployment benefits numerous times in the past year on the basis that they weren't paid for. They chose to forget that this sort of economic stimulus/emergency assistance money isn't usually immediately offset, hence calling it an emergency. This is also the party that, in March, blocked a reauthorization for funding the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. To name just one more thing (and there are many) this is also the party that would much more readily cut funding for already weak and vulnerable student aid, veterans' benefits, and food stamps than defense.
While the Republican Party has its problems, the Democrats aren't that great either. They too are all funded by corporations, and those in power are also mostly rich white guys. Yes. I get it. But, as Bill Maher put so well, better a disappointing friend than a deadly enemy.
It is worth noting that some Democrats tend to care about the underprivileged. They tend to not want to heap more benefits on the super rich. Sometimes, they acknowledge the fact that inequality exists in this country. They tend to realize that the federal government has an important role to play in things like public aid. They are sometimes, but not all the time, actively in favor of expanding civil rights. They are often willing to compromise. They even occasionally propose things that would benefit the economy—see, for example, food stamps and
Progressive Perspective
BY ALI FREE
afree@kansap.com
public infrastructure projects.
public infrastructure projects.
Sometimes, they even act upon these concerns, and results benefit people. All people? Probably not. True democratic policies aren't going to do much for the extremely, unbelievably rich.
But I can handle that—that's not going to be me, or you, or hardly any of us. I'd rather have policies that benefit my own interests, and especially the kinds of policies I know I could count on if I or my family ever landed on hard times. I'd like to be able to trust the government to help my family get through if my stepfather lost his job. Call me selfish
Will people realize that when their benefits are cut and their quality of life decreases or fails to increase, it is not entirely the President's fault? That the left fought to improve the economy and peoples' lives? Will people realize the consequences of their actions?
The next two years will be rough. I predict a sluggish economy and, if the House has anything to do with it, little advancement in civil rights. How did I come to these conclusions? Well, for one, shortly after they were elected, new Republican governors joined other Republican leaders in vowing to kill a high speed rail that would have provided jobs using stimulus money and linked several Midwestern cities together. And on Nov. 17, Republicans in the Senate voted unanimously to defeat legislation that would narrow the pay gap between women and men.
I want to encourage my fellow disappointed liberals to not give up. Don't disappear, don't become jaded. Keep calling your representatives and senators, keep paying attention to the news, keep talking with friends and family members. Yes, things are going to be dishearening for a while, but it will be all the worse if we leave the picture entirely.
(4)
Free is a sophomore from Blue Springs, Mo., in women's studies.
A.
Chatterbox
"The reason why people don't go to the hospital for drinking 'rum and cokes' is the caffeine content. 135 mg of caffeine is a significantly larger amount than the caffeine coming from a small glass of coke. And also the alcohol content of a Four Loko is about four times that of a drink one may normally mix in a bar. THIS is why it is a deadly combination. The large drink can, as well as the flavoring both mask the fact that it is a drink that should be consumed over a long period of time. Studies have indicated that a young woman drinking the same alcohol content of a Four Loko within an hour would bring her BAL up to .15, twice the legal limit."
Responses to the news of the week on Kansan.com
— "Acirocco" in response to "Four Loko nixes caffeine" on Nov. 22.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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